Quality and Standards Department

The Quality and Standards Team helps our clinical staff, doctors, nurses and colleagues in the systematic review of the quality of patient care.

The team supports the delivery of the Trust’s Quality and Standards Agenda and provides support, guidance, education and training for all clinical staff, healthcare professionals and non-clinical staff who want to undertake clinical audit and effectiveness activities within the Trust.

This may include reviewing clinical structures, processes and outcomes against standards, evaluating our services and gathering feedback.

This work is important for enhancing our quality of care and helps us improve our standards.

What our work involves

• obtaining and providing evidence and assurance for national, local and regional requirements such as the Care Quality Commission, Quality Accounts, Key Performance Indicators, Commissioners, National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)
• participating in the National Clinical Audit and Outcomes Programme
• supporting the effective delivery of clinical audit and effectiveness activities
• development and review of medical handbooks, guidelines and protocols
• compliance with clinical policies and procedures
• development and support of patient user experience surveys
• supporting clinician’s revalidation and recertification processes
• providing a clinical audit and effectiveness education and training programmes

Clinical audit and service evaluation

A key component of our work is undertaking and supporting clinical audit and service evaluation projects.

Clinical audit

‘A quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the implementation of change.’ NICE, 2002.

Service evaluation

Service evaluation (SE) is defined as a process of reviewing the effectiveness of a service or aspect of that service through questionnaires, patient or staff surveys.

In short we question if we are doing what we should be doing and how effective we are in the provision of clinical care.